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Season / Show Tickets

Please join us for our 27th season! Season tickets are only $45*/each. Pre-Purchase your season ticket[s] by remitting the order form below with a check made out to Cumberland Oratorio Singers. Your tickets will be mailed to you in 4-6 weeks. Individual concert tickets are available at the door for $15*/each. Students of all ages are admitted for $5 with ID. Group discounts (10 or more people) are available. [*Ticket prices include the 7% state sales tax as required per N.C. Gen. Statute 105-164.4[a][10], in effect as of 2013.]

Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and has its roots in blues and ragtime. Although it is not known specifically who started jazz or who invented the term, some will say that jazz was born in 1895, when Buddy Bolden started his first band. Jazz is to American music what the Mississippi is to America, and just as many rivers feed into the Mississippi, music (and musicians) from many cultures came together in the creation of jazz. According to Jazz impresario Norman Granz “Jazz is America’s own. It is played and listened to by all peoples in harmony together. Pigmentation differences have no place...as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.” Jazz has all the elements that other music has, melody and harmony, but what sets jazz apart is this cool thing called improvisation — making up the melody in the moment and making it fit within the context of the work. In tonight’s concert, you will hear works from those composers famous for Jazz: George Gershwin, Jimmy Van Heusen, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter, just to name a few. Tonight’s concert is a bit of a detour from the works we normally do, but make no mistake, tonight’s concert is as challenging for the performers as any time during the past 26 years of existence. We hope that you truly enjoy this American art form as we celebrate our jazz roots.

George Frideric Handel’s most successful and best known oratorio was composed in the year 1741. The music was written in 24 days from August 22nd to September 14th. It was first performed in a concert given for charity in Dublin, Ireland on April 13, 1742 with Handel as the conductor. The Dublin Journal reviewed “It gave universal satisfaction to all present; and was allowed by the greatest judges to be the finest composition of musick that ever was heard.” This was hardly the same reaction a year later when Messiah premiered in London. In fact, it took more than ten years to finally reach the level of success of which we are now accustomed. Handel’s Messiah has become a work that has been performed all over the world and has become a Fayetteville and COS tradition. For many choirs, Messiah has become the main work that rests in the center of their respective seasons, and the Cumberland Oratorio Singers shares this sentiment.

There can be no doubt that over the long history of Art Music and music composition, there have been several composers that, because of their music, compositional techniques, and pioneering efforts, have stood head and shoulders above all of the rest. We may debate (to great lengths) the issues over who may be the greatest, but for tonight’s concert, we focus on three Masters: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, and Johannes Brahms. Mozart, a noted and gifted composer and performer, was the wunderkind of the mid to late 1700’s Austria and composed across a number of forms — Symphony, Opera, Concerti, Motets, and Masses. Schubert practically devised the template for the German art song known as lieder. Brahms was a noted pianist and built upon the efforts of Schubert’s German lieder, doing much to preserve German folk songs through the German Art Song template. We may not agree over who is the best, but we all can agree that these three — Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms — are three composers we would include at the top of the best of all time and we would be correct in bestowing upon them the title of Master. Audience members are encouraged to bring their scores and sing along.

The origins of music from the stage and screen comes from the mid 1800’s France and the newly formed genre (at that time), Opera Comique that was dominated by such composers as Georges Bizet and Jacques Offenbach. It was there that spoken dialogue and music were combined for the first time, setting the genre apart from Opera to form what would become the modern-day musical. Some of the world’s most famous and beautiful music has come from the Broadway stage or the silver screen. More so now, with the rise of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and other services that provide theatrical and movie entertainment across many mediums, we, as Americans, are more informed of the music of stage and screen than in past generations. In tonight’s concert, you will hear music from such musicals as Man of La Mancha, Singing in the Rain, and Chicago and music from such movies as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Casablanca, and White Christmas. This is a concert of light- hearted music, music that will make you smile, remember good times, and may even cause you to sing along! We hope you enjoy a Night of Stage and Screen.